Sweetness and Adversity
by snowflakeswift
Summary: Everyone knows that Princess Bubblegum and the Vampire Queen have had a history...
1. A Pastel Soup

**This is my first Adventure Time fanfiction that I think is good enough to post. Previously, I'd always tried to write from Finn's POV, which just didn't work for me. I couldn't connect with Finn. So here's my take on Marceline, albeit she's younger than we see her in the show! She's mentally a sixteen-year-old here, and so is PB. This is before Finn and Jake exist, so Marceline is probably about 950 years old. Don't worry, Finn and Jake will appear later in the story, although as more minor characters since I cannot write Finn or Jake's thoughts and emotions. What's an AT fanfiction without some good juicy bromance? ENJOY! (Or, if you don't, at least review.)**

**Sorry, that was the longest author's note I'll ever write.**

Marceline had been younger then. She hadn't ditched wearing bright colors yet, and she'd occasionally suck pink or orange instead of red. Her hair was already waist-length, though she'd kept it braided or tied back. Instead of the leather boots that were now her signature, she wore sneakers or slippers, or on occasion even ballet flats.

She'd dipped and floated over the green crests of hills and once, just for the fun of it, she'd stuck her head through a fluffy-looking cloud. She smelled of marshmallows for days afterwards. She'd tease the Fluffy People and laugh at their squeaky voices, or she'd go to the Slime Disco and dance with the slime-jects. She had not a care in the world, and there were plenty of red colors, and they always tasted like strawberries, cinnamon and sunlight.

She'd sing with a voice as bright and light as a cooing dove's.

And then one day, in her wanderings, she came across the Candy Kingdom.

What first attracted her to the Candy Kingdom was its cacophony of colors. Pink dripped into green, which melted into puddles of turquoise on a ground of purple dotted with red. Every color was bright, soft, eye-catching in its unreal-ness. Houses were roofed with striped red and white, walled with blue and green. The people laughed and chattered happily in garments of bright yellows and purples that stood out against their candy skin. The tiny buttons glistened with a sugary pinkness.

Even then, Marceline had been attracted to this vibrant soup of pastels and mellow brightnesses. She hovered over it, and even alighted on one peppermint roof and sucked the scarlet from one of its stripes. It had a clean, sharp, sweet flavor, and she laughed and floated on.

Then the Candy Castle caught her eye. It was pink, with dabs of green and yellow and blue that glistened and twinkled in the light. Candy trees surrounded it, and the clouds above it looked as if they were cotton candy of the highest quality. A candy rainbow floated in the lemon-blue sky, supported by two fluffy clouds.

She floated toward the spectacle, mouth open. The walls turned out to be hard, sticky pink candy. The windows, though clear, were not glass, though they were brittle. Tentatively, Marceline floated higher until she was about halfway up one of the towers. She poked the sticky pink wall again.

"Who knows, might be good," she said to herself, before sinking her sharp teeth into the wall.

It _was_ good. The sweetness flooded her mouth, pinks and greys and candies and colors. She sucked, sucked, until a patch of the bubblegum wall was the color of her own skin. Then her sharp ears were pierced by an alarming sound.

"_Citizens of the Candy Kingdom!_" a shrill, bright voice yelled. "_There is an attacker on the north parapet of the Candy Castle! Gather, and let us show it how terrifying the Candy People can be!"_

Marceline watched in horror as if her spirit were detached from her body, her teeth still embedded in the bubblegum wall. She pulled them out, and the hard candy made a squeaking sound. She tried to float higher, higher, out of the Candy People's sight, but her heart hammered and seemed to become heavier and heavier, weighing her down until she seemed to be stuck in a dream where she found herself running through strands of gum, trying to break through each, until the gum thickened and liquefied and became a bright pastel soup. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a rainbow flash out of one of the tower's windows.

She shook her head. "Stop!" she cried in a voice that seemed shaky even to her. "I haven't done anything!"

She continued to float upwards, though she was slowing. The babble of voices slowly died to a murmur, then a whisper. She began to have hope.

Then a multicolored net descended upon her. Looking up through terrified eyes, Marceline saw a young pink girl astride a rainicorn, from whose horn the rainbow net was entangling her in its meshes. The sun was bright, too bright. In Marceline's vision, the world melted, all the colors blended and brightened, intensified, until each seemed clearer and duller, all merged together in one pastel soup.

**So how was it? Liked? Didn't like? Either way, review!**


	2. Unreadable Eyes

_**Hello, again! I am channeling my inner Princess Bubblegum~ Just kidding! This chapter isn't going to be quite as flowery and boring as the last one, but I hope you can still spot some metaphors! Also, I had to make some changes to Princess Bubblegum's lab…I get that it isn't quite so fancy, and it doesn't have quite so many gadgets and mechanical arms and stuff, but I thought, why can't a princess's lab be pretty as well as kickass? And Bubblegum is a kickass princess, even though she can be quite cold sometimes…**_

Princess Bubblegum looked down at the grey girl entangled in Lady Rainicorn's net and sighed.

"What are you?" she called.

The girl stared at her through defiant eyes that were like midnight lakes, but made no sound.

"What are you?" she called again, impatiently.

"I'm Marceline, the Vampire Queen," said the girl loudly.

Princess Bubblegum gasped. "A vampire?" she exclaimed.

Lady Rainicorn, who Princess Bubblegum was riding, said something in Korean. "Yes, pull her in, Lady," Princess Bubblegum muttered, though absently. Lady started to retrieve the net, sucking the colorful strands back into her horn.

It just so happened that Princess Bubblegum had always been interested in the properties of the undead. Did they feel emotions? If so, how? How much of their memory from their past life did they retain, if any?

And here was this floating attacker, this _vampire _who embedded itself in her candy walls.

"Lady, we can go in now," Princess Bubblegum said.

Lady Rainicorn let out a string of Korean, to which Princess Bubblegum said, a little tiredly, "Please try, Lady!"

With a visible effort, Lady Rainicorn pulled, and hoisted both Princess Bubblegum and the undead girl to the highest room in the tower.

"Where is this?" the vampire girl called with no audible tremble in her voice.

"It's my lab," Princess Bubblegum answered, sitting down at her bright desk, on which a number of brightly colored vials and flasks were simmering and fizzing. Multicolored buttons lined the surface, each with its own, sometimes dangerous, function.

"And you are taking me here because?" the vampire said, trying to stand up.

"You're a vampire," said Princess Bubblegum. "Now will you please stop talking so I can figure out a way to get you properly sterilized!"

"I'm clean!"

"Well, I still have to sterilize you. It's lab procedures."

"Why? Am I not _good _enough for you?" the vampire girl spat. Princess Bubblegum took a note of that. It was a sign of emotion.

"I didn't say that; you just have to be clean," Princess Bubblegum said.

Lady Rainicorn made a comment. "Yeah, you can untangle her now," said the princess, taking out her bubblegum-pink digital notepad.

The rainbow-soft meshes retracted and disappeared. Lady Rainicorn flopped onto her belly, exhausted.

The vampire made for the window, immediately; Princess Bubblegum laid her finger on a blue button. Immediately, panels of glass shot up and around the open windows, shocking the girl so that she fell.

"I wouldn't try, if I were you," said the princess.

The vampire growled. She tried to rise, but was too dizzy to get much beyond a half-squat, so she sat on the floor, watching Princess Bubblegum with clenched fists and intense, dark, unreadable eyes.

"Was that growl you just did a sign of emotion, or of warning?" Princess Bubblegum wondered aloud. This seemed to hit the girl in the stomach like a ton of bricks.

"You think I don't feel?"

"Of course! You're undead! That's why I have to conduct experiments on you. You are undead, right?"

"Yeah, I guess, but that doesn't mean I don't feel!" Her shiny black eyes focussed on Princess Bubblegum with the intensity of midnight lakes. Even the Princess's trained eyes were unable to detect emotion behind that visage, yet her tone spoke so clearly what her eyes could not!

"Hm. Well, we'll let science solve that, and meanwhile, if you just step into that little room on the side over there—" The princess flipped another switch, and a bubblegum-pink door materialized seemingly out of nowhere on the north wall. "We'll get you cleaned up, and see what you can do."

"And what if I don't?" said the undead girl, getting unsteadily to her feet. "What if I just stand here."

Princess Bubblegum merely said, "I have the control panel of this room here on this desk. There are exactly two hundred and forty-eight buttons all within easy reach, and I know the function of each by heart as well as the back of my hand."

The undead girl stood, her eyes boring holes in the back of the Princess's mind.

Princess Bubblegum pressed a third button, and the middle of the lab's floor suddenly split, revealing a pair of robotic arms. A glinting, red light beeped, then stood silent. The mechanical arms swiveled to face Marceline.

"Are you going, or not?" said the Princess.

Marceline, very slowly, picked herself up and floated toward the room.


	3. Cherry, Crystal

It wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. As soon as she was in the smaller room, the walls slid closed, and a shower of sweet-smelling bubbles fell on her, then a deluge of lemon-scented water, which left her cold and shivering. However, the walls opened to reveal circular dryers, which blew warm wind on her and left her dry in less than five minutes.

The walls slid open again, and she floated into the lab, where the…_personage _who had trapped her was preparing a rather intimidating pink leather chair with gadgets sticking out all over it. Behind the chair, a glowing screen waited, silent, for figures and numbers to appear on it that would _analyze_.

"I still don't know who you are," Marceline said.

She turned to face Marceline, giving Marceline a good chance to take all of her in. Her cherry-pink hair, and her bubblegum skin, and white lab coat that somehow managed to fit her figure perfectly, and the golden diadem set in her knee-length hair that marked her as a princess.

"I'm the princess of the Candy Kingdom," said the princess of the Candy Kingdom. "Princess Bubblegum!"

"Princess Bubblegum!" Marceline cried. She'd heard of this bubblegum princess, whose inventions were used all across Ooo. "Sweet!"

Princess Bubblegum looked as if she were trying not to smile. "You don't say," she said.

Marceline almost laughed then, before remembering that she was captive. "What are you going to do?" she asked.

"You're sterilized now, so you're authorized to go near the lab equipment. Go in that chair," said Princess Bubblegum.

Marceline floated toward the pink leather chair. "Why?"

"Now I'm going to take a few notes before I begin my investigation," said Princess Bubblegum, keying in a few words on her digital pad. "The appendages won't hurt you, even though they might look a little intimidating. One of them will come down to clamp over your forehead, but that's the most it'll do. You might feel some vibrations, but they won't hurt your skin."

"Why?" asked Marceline, as the metal gadgets whirred towards her. One, just like Bubblegum had said, came to a smooth stop fractions of an inch above her forehead, vibrated, then moved to just touch her.

"They detect emotion," said Princess Bubblegum.

Marceline almost choked. "You've seen me going through this much, and you still don't believe I have emotion?"

The princess shrugged. "I don't believe anything, until it is proven scientifically in a way I can understand. That's how I've survived this long." Marceline thought she saw hurt then, behind the princess's impeccably beautiful eyes. It was hurt, and there was something else behind it too—Marceline had not lived nine and a half centuries for nothing. As well as the princess hid it, Marceline could see her distrust of the world.

Behind the princess, the glowing screen Bubblegum had set up and connected to the chair began to show pink waves, beeping as they zoomed up and down and across the screen.

Marceline almost began to pity the pink candy princess then, although it was she who was trapped in the pink leather chair in the cool, pink candy lab in the perfectly pink candy tower in the mellow, pastel pink Candy Kingdom, with the pink waves analyzing her as if she was a scientific experiment, which, of course, she was; everyone was a scientific experiment, a toy put there by some higher being, an existential joke, a stardust nothing…Marceline started to see stars. Even the pink personage before her who trusted no one, but whom everyone trusted, was merely a trick of fate.

The princess tutted and typed furiously in her notepad. "You're not even that far into the test, and the emotion meter is already starting to show your emotion waves. That's a fairly good sign of emotion. But…what is this emotion you're feeling?"

Marceline held her breath and threw around words in her head. She thought of cherries and crystals, and stared behind Bubblegum at the pink waves riding up and down on the black screen, slowly steadying themselves…

"You're holding it in." The princess's voice had become gentler. "Don't."

And Marceline made a crazy decision.

She remembered that night, so long ago, when her father had eaten her fries and she had cried and realized that maybe it was time for her to leave. She remembered Simon, who had turned into the Ice King, trying to save her. In the corner of her eye, she saw the pink waves almost vibrating, they were moving so hard.

"You can stop now," said the princess in a voice that was almost shaky. "I don't think any logical human being can say you're emotionless."

"Any logical human being would have figured that out long ago," Marceline grumbled, as the metal gadgets retreated from her.


	4. Candy Sunset

**I am a horrible person and from now on there will be updates every Friday, even if I have to ****prop my eyelids open with pencils to do it. This is a short, filler-y chapter, but its main purpose is to show that I'm still alive and help me deal with some of Marceline and PB's very strong emotions. And I LOVE ALL MY REVIEWERS. AND FOLLOWERS.**

~_MARCELINE_~

Freedom felt good, especially when she'd just defied one of the most important personages in the Land of Ooo. Marceline turned a few cartwheels, then morphed back into her own body.

"Ugh!" she cried into the thick, sweet air of the Candy Kingdom. Even her voice seemed sweet and thick. She felt as if she'd been gummed up.

She'd always wanted to meet Princess Bubblegum. She'd been disappointed when she had. Did everyone had to let her down? First her father, then Simon, and now Princess Bubblegum. Granted, she'd only known the girl for a few moments, but in those few moments the princess had trapped her in a lab room and performed degrading experiments on her. And people asked her why she roamed Ooo alone! She had yet to meet someone who could answer that question.

Marceline had every right to hate Princess Bubblegum with all her heart, and in a way, she did.

The sunset had always fascinated Marceline. It was one of the only red things she could not make colorless, and so she watched it with the wonder one watches things one can never have. Now it brushed the unnatural colors of the Candy Kingdom with its mellow redness, and Marceline was glad to leave the kingdom behind.

She didn't stop flying until she could no longer see any spires or houses.

~_PRINCESS BUBBLEGUM_~

Princess Bubblegum should be glad that the Vampire Queen had left.

After all, the vampire had not exactly been very _polite _the last—and first—time Princess Bubblegum had seen her. And Princess Bubblegum, one of the most celebrated princesses and inventors in the whole of Ooo, was not used to being snapped at.

All she had done was perform a few experiments on the vampire, and they had not been very harmful experiments at that. Once she'd tested for emotions, she'd immediately let Marceline go, had she not?

Discarding her lab equipment, she allowed Peppermint Butler to bring her a cup of tea. She did not leave her lab, though, like she'd usually have done. She paced its polished lengths, allowing herself to slip into a state of waking unconsciousness.

Outside the window, the candy sunset seeped into the Candy Kingdom, flowing over the pinks and yellows and greens Princess Bubblegum ruled over. Princess Bubblegum loved her kingdom—it was the one thing she truly loved, and she felt a sense of dread pervading her usually orderly mind like the sunset was drowning her perfect kingdom.


	5. Twisted Key

**-A/N-**

**Hello! So I scribbled this chapter as quickly as I could, and I hope you enjoy it.**

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**~PRINCESS BUBBLEGUM~**

The last thing Princess Bubblegum expected to see that night, as she leaned comfortably back into a mound of fluffy pillows, was Marceline the Vampire Queen.

But as fate would have it, Marceline the Vampire Queen's face appeared about ten feet away from her window that night just as she was entering a very important coded message into her diary.

"Vampire Queen!" Princess Bubblegum screamed, managing to leap half a foot off her bed, even though she was dressed in her customary, rather confining bubblegum-pink dress and had been sitting cross-legged. The diary snapped shut with a click.

The Vampire Queen's face contorted, and Princess Bubblegum realized that she was trying to mouth something. "Let—me—in," Princess Bubblegum mouth-read.

"Are you _serious_?" cried Princess Bubblegum. "I thought I told you to never come within a ten-foot radius of my castle again!"

The undead girl smirked. "I'm _eleven feet away_," she mouthed.

"You're _infuriating_!" shrieked Princess Bubblegum.

"I know," mouthed the undead girl.

"Go _away_! Get out of my kingdom!"

"No."

"I'm going to—"

"I," mouthed the vampire, "am a Queen."

"I," said Princess Bubblegum, "am Princess Bubblegum. And I am perfectly entitled to throw something at you!"

The vampire laughed and crossed her arms. "Try," said her lips.

Princess Bubblegum picked up the first thing that entered her sight—which, unfortunately, was her diary. "Get _out_!" she yelled, lobbing the heavy diary at the Queen.

The vampire laughed and swooped to catch the diary. She threw it back in, and transformed herself into a bat. The bat flew in through Princess Bubblegum's window, in which there was now a diary-shaped hole.

"Hello, Princess," grinned Marceline the Vampire Queen.

Princess Bubblegum backed about ten feet away from the approaching Vampire Queen. "I'll throw something else at you," she warned.

"Oh, there's no need for that, your Highness," said the Queen, savoring the word "Highness" with bittersweet mockery. "I just came to return this."

Princess Bubblegum stared, horrified, at the small key Marceline held in her outstretched hand.

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~**MARCELINE~**

Marceline had found the key sticking to her tight jean pockets, having been caught in the fabric. How she had picked it up, she had no idea. But weighing the tiny, twisted metal piece in her palm, she somehow felt all the trouble in Princess Bubblegum's eyes come trooping back to her and realized that this key was important and held the weight of worlds in its small frame.

Now, as she watched the Princess's impeccably beautiful eyes flood with terror, she realized that the key was indeed terribly important.

"I forgot!" cried the Princess. "How could I!"

She stared with blank horror at Marceline, who returned her stare with blank confusion.

Before Marceline could say anything, she felt the Princess's hand lock upon her wrist with a vice-like grip. "Two," said the Princess cryptically, her dark pools of eyes growing even bigger in the bright candy light. "Two," she repeated.

"What?" Marceline said, trying to withdraw her hand.

The Princess sighed as if she were reaching back in her mind for a faraway memory. The well-known, much feared prophecy rose to her lips with the sighing crackle of old parchment, and Marceline listened to the ancient rhyme with renewed understanding.

"_Two shall wake the enemy in the dead of night _

_Two shall hold the war-cry, two shall start the fight _

_Two shall win the battle in the full moon's light_

_And one will remain when dawn shines bright."_

"Two," repeated Marceline, realization dawning on her. "What time is it, Princess?"

"Eleven fifty p.m.," said the Princess levelly.

"We have exactly ten minutes," whispered Marceline. "I am so glad I brought back the key."

"Me, too," said the Princess, letting go of Marceline's wrist. "We'd better hurry."

"Where?" asked Marceline. "Where do you keep it?"

"In the dungeons," said the Princess, unlocking her bedroom door. "Follow me, and be quiet. We don't want to wake Peppermint Butler, or Heaven forbid, Cinnamon Bun."

Marceline felt a cold thrill run through her body.

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**.**

**-A/N-**

**I hope you guys enjoyed it! I am thrilled by the fact that I have ****_ten_**** followers. I never expected that many! **

**About this chapter. I get that it's rather cryptic, but prophecies usually are. I hope every mystery will be explained, in the very least, in two chapters! I don't know how long this fan-fiction is going to be continuing for. I have the main plot line worked out in my mind, but I am the kind of person that usually adds something major in the middle—like the prophecy idea, which came to me literally AS I was writing PB's response. That's rather a major plot change, and I'll have to tweak some stuff to go along with it. I'm anticipating this to run for around 20 chapters. It's my first fanfic, and it might as well be my baby. I spend time crooning "My precioussssssssss" to it. Yeah. Well.**


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